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How will free-spending Ford pay for Ontario’s $400-billion nuclear plans?

Mark Winfield, The Globe and Mail, Feb. 24, 2026, Mark Winfield is a professor of environmental and urban change at York University and co-editor of Sustainable Energy Transitions in Canada (UBC Press 2023). https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/commentary/article-how-will-free-spending-ford-pay-for-ontarios-400-billion-nuclear-plans/#comments

One of the central unanswered questions about the Doug Ford government’s nuclear expansion plans for Ontario has been: How they will be paid for? The program includes new nuclear power plants at Darlington, Bruce and Wesleyville, and the refurbishments of existing reactors at the Bruce, Pickering and Darlington sites. Estimates of the capital costs of the government’s plans, based on past projects and recent experiences in the United States and Europe, exceed $400-billion.

The government’s plans envision an electricity system that is 75-per-cent nuclear in terms of output, up from approximately 50 per cent today. If the costs of these plans are to be paid for through the rates charged for the electricity produced, electricity bills will rise dramatically.

Estimates of the costs of electricity from new nuclear plants in Ontario range from the mid-20 cents a kilowatt-hour to more than 40 cents a kwh – double or even triple current consumer electricity costs.  Such increases would undermine energy affordability, Ontario’s economic competitiveness and any plans for decarbonization through electrification.

Another alternative could be to hide the capital costs as debt, while keeping hydro rates low. That was the strategy followed by previous governments with the province’s original nuclear construction program between 1966 and 1993. In the end, the accumulation of debt flowing from that approach reached $38-billion (about $72-billion in current dollars), leaving the provincial utility, Ontario Hydro, economically inviable and effectively bankrupt.

A series of revelations over the past few months have made it clear that the province seems to have another, potentially equally problematic, plan in mind. It has become apparent that the 29-per-cent increase in electricity rates last Nov. 1 was directly related to the financing arrangements for the $25-billion Ontario Power Generation’s Darlington new-build reactor project, and the $26-billion refurbishment of the Pickering B nuclear station.

The impact on residential hydro bills of the November increase was mitigated through a near doubling of the province’s electricity rebate program, at a cost of approximately $2-billion a year, paid out of general revenues. In effect, that meant the province had begun paying for the capital costs of the Darlington and Pickering projects out of general provincial revenues. Moreover, recent changes to Ontario Energy Board rules have created an unprecedented situation in which ratepayers and taxpayers are now being asked to pay for nuclear projects that may never be completed or function.

The November increase in the rebate program brought the total costs of the province’s electricity rate subsidy programs to approximately $8.5-billion a year. These expenditures now amount to the equivalent of nearly two-thirds of the province’s deficit, exceed total expenditures in the justice sector, and are approximately double the annual capital investments in schools and health care.

The Pickering B and Darlington new-build projects are only the beginnings of the province’s nuclear expansion plans. Additional projects proposed for Wesleyville and the Bruce nuclear site could involve capital expenditures in excess of $300-billion.

If financed in the same way, the portion of the provincial budget consumed by electricity subsidies could reach $20-billion a year – nearly 10 per cent of the province’s total budget. That would force either dramatic increases in the provincial deficit to more than $30-billion a year, substantial tax increases or major reductions in spending in other – already in the view of many analysts – chronically underfunded areas such as health care, education, municipal and social services, and non-electricity public infrastructure.

There is, however, another, and better, option. None of the province’s plans have been subject to any external review in terms of their economic, technological or environmental rationality. Moreover, the province’s plans seem premised on assumptions of absolute technological, economic, social, environmental and political certainty reaching decades into the future. These are things about which, in a ruptured and destabilized world, there can only be absolute certainty of uncertainty. The situation adds to the risks of the province locking into a deeply inflexible energy pathway centred on large, high-cost and high-risk generating assets.

Ontario has been the subject of more efforts to develop and model alternative pathways for its electricity system, and the broader decarbonization of its energy system, than any other province in Canada. But there is no process to assess whether the directions set by the provincial government represent the best options for the province in economic and environmental terms relative to the alternative pathways that have been identified.

That situation needs to change rapidly. The province needs to engage in a serious, objective and independent assessment of its energy options for meeting future energy needs, while controlling costs, decarbonizing the province’s electricity system and advancing sustainability.

February 28, 2026 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, Canada